It doesn't show it, no. You can right click and select properties or hover your mouse over it. Both show the size - properties shows more information such as the size on disk rather than just the nominal size that the tool tip shows.

There are plenty of third party tools which will show you the size of folders (such as treesize free ) but File explorer will not.

It doesn't show it, no. You can right click and select properties or hover your mouse over it. Both show the size - properties shows more information such as the size on disk rather than just the nominal size that the tool tip shows.

There are plenty of third party tools which will show you the size of folders (such as treesize free ) but File explorer will not.

Windows Explorer does not show folder sizes because Windows doesn't know, and cannot know, without a potentially long and laborious process. A single folder might contain hundreds of thousands or even millions of files, each one of which would have to be looked at to obtain the folder size. That is bad enough on a fast SSD. But imagine what it would be like on a slow conventional drive, or even worse, a slow network connection.

Windows Explorer does not show folder sizes because Windows doesn't know, and cannot know, without a potentially long and laborious process. A single folder might contain hundreds of thousands or even millions of files, each one of which would have to be looked at to obtain the folder size. That is bad enough on a fast SSD. But imagine what it would be like on a slow conventional drive, or even worse, a slow network connection.

The blog entries are by Raymond Chen, a Microsoft developer since before Windows 95.

With all due respect to the Microsoft windows development team it seems like it would be pretty easy to me to have windows have a table of folder sizes that it updates whenever a file is changed.

Be that as it may. I don't understand why tiny third party software can do it lighting fast but explorer is incapable of implementing similar technology.

Because those tiny programs concentrate on doing that one thing only using fast recursive searches , explorer is coded to do a lot more and a file copy for example would get majorly bogged down if it ran that recursive search to the exemption of everything else when you opened a drive letter.

Windows 10 Folder SizeHi,
When any of you right click on the Windows folder, what size is yours as I get 91.8GB... Can't believe how big this OS is and that's only the Windows Folder...
UPDATE - It looks like the folder Windows/Logs is the problem it's over 70GB......

General Support

Explorer: not responding when opening folder with exe fileI have a folder full of *.exe files. When I navigate to the folder to read its content (files listed in "tile" mode), Explorer hangs for a minute or two displaying in the title bar "not responding". Eventually, the files are displayed but it is a...

About Us
Windows 10 Forums is an independent web site and has not been authorized,
sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation.
"Windows 10" and related materials are trademarks of Microsoft Corp.